A New Free App Offers Relief For Dry Eyes (Yes, Really)

Firstly, eye drops are an obvious go-to in the case of dry eyes, so let’s speak on those first. Indeed, even the app we’re going to talk about recommends also using eye drops.

Do you want to use eye drops, but you find it’s difficult to take them? Here’s a method that is much easier than trying to put anything in an open eye:

• Step 0: if you are wearing eyeliner/mascara, please remove that first!

• Step 1: lie down, flat on your back (unlike tilting your head back, you won’t accidentally revert posture and lose the eye drop down your cheek)
• Step 2: close your eyes!
• Step 3: with your eyes still closed, apply the correct number of drops as close to the inner corner of your eye as possible
• Step 4: open your eyes; the drop(s) will just flow into place.

• Step 5 (bonus): blink a few times to distribute, if necessary. If it was just one drop, this is probably not needed

Still, eye drops are not the only way: Eye Drops: Safety & Alternatives

Now, to deliver on the headline promise…

About the app

A team of researchers, Dr. Sònia Travé-Huarte et al., investigated how blinking exercises can improve dry eye symptoms (in this context, improve = reduce or ideally eliminate).

Blinking exercises have been well-established as a way of diagnosing dry eyes, but when it comes to using blinking exercises to treat dry eyes, little science has been done before this.

The tested 98 participants diagnosed with dry eyes (and their dryness scores recorded before the study began), and gave them various sets of blinking and/or squeezing exercises (using the muscles around the eye, not one’s hands! The facial movement colloquially called screwing one’s eyes tightly closed), with various permutations of sets and reps.

A second part of the study optimized the app parameters, based on symptom severity and frequency, blink rate/completeness, tear film stability and volume, along with ocular surface staining. In short, much was done and much was measured.

What they found (after a lot of testing and subsequent mathematics):

❝Fifteen repeats of close-squeeze-open cycles, 3x/day was the optimum blinking exercise routine, reducing symptoms, number of incomplete blinks and conjunctival staining.❞

Read in full: Optimisation of blinking exercises for dry eye disease ← the research paper

One of the researchers is the head of Aston University’s School of Optometry, and had this to say:

❝This research confirmed that blink exercises can be a way of overcoming the bad habit of only partially closing our eyes during a blink, that we develop when using digital devices.

The research demonstrated that the most effective way to do the exercises is three times a day, 15 repeats of close, squeeze shut and reopen—just three minutes in total out of your busy lifestyle.

To make it easier, we have made our MyDryEye app freely available on iOS and Android so you can choose when you want to be reminded to do the exercises and for this to map your progress and how it affects your symptoms.❞

Read in full: New app helps relieve dry eye through optimized blinking routine ← a pop-science article about the aforementioned research paper

Want the app?

Notwithstanding that they mention having made it freely available on the iOS and Android app store, we were (at time of writing) only able to find it for iOS:

See MyDryEye in the Apple App Store

We suspect that this simply means that for Android, it’s still going through the “approval” stage and will be publicly available shortly—so Android users, you might want to check later whether it’s available in the Google Play Store.

Want to learn more?

Check out:

What Your Eyes Say About Your Health (If You Have A Mirror, You Can Do This Now!)

Take care!